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Question 8: Prosperity

What should Canada do to help make the benefits of globalization more widely shared within and among all countries?

 

 

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Contributor:USC
Date: 2003-05-01 13:02:53
Answer:
Globalization has the potential for great good. However, Canada should work to ensure that we are improving the benefits of globalization on the poor as many people in the poorest countries cannot benefit from globalization, or anything else, until very basic health, education, water, and other social services are widely available.

We need to fare better with our Aid budget. Canada's record on international aid in the last decade has been well below the target of 0,7%. Recently announced increases will only bring Canada's aid to about 0.31% of GNP by 2010 which does not even bring Canada back to the 1995 level, and is less than halfway to the 0.7% international target reached by several other countries.

Working with other middle powers that share Canada’s philosophy of human security is an excellent way of keeping the issues that relate to globalization on the agenda when other states become distracted by their own interests. Multilateralism of this sort is also an effective way of reinforcing each other’s moral compass when other, more unilateral, interests threaten to take up all of the attention.
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